Saturday, October 23, 2004

Another Child Scarred

Drudge links to a disturbing story out of Macon, Georgia.

Having already taken CBS to task for their ad hominem attacks characterizing all home schoolers as child abusers, it's altogether too easy to fall into the same trap and accuse all public schools of scarring children for life.

In this case, most of the abuse was actually heaped on a parent, but allegedly the child and 18 of her classmates witnessed the horrific beating.

Given the sketchy details, and assuming the reports of the severity of the incident to be true, there can be no excuse for this behavior. The teacher sits in jail, while the mother of the student recovers in the hospital. And the student? Well, one can only guess that since she screamed for her teacher to cease and was then herself made a target of the violence, the child will be scarred for some time to come.

Principal Karen Konke sent letters to parents about the incident.

"Let me assure you the school is safe and that our students have been involved in appropriate instructional activities throughout the day," Konke wrote.

Well, yeah, except for that little free-for-all in one of our classes. But don't let that worry you! Business as usual! We have things well in hand!

Sorry. If my child brought home a letter like that, and I read this same story in the local news, my child would not be returning to that school any time in the future. Period.

I freely admit that I have no answers to this dilemma. No, I lie. I do have an answer that meets my own needs (and, by extension, those of my family). My children will not be subjected to public school. I will not take a chance that some seemingly responsible adult will have one of those days, and take it out on one of my sweet daughters. I refuse to allow them to be indoctrinated with the humanist arrogance of the system.

My children will continue to pledge allegiance to a flag belonging to a nation under God. They will not only pray in school, but will memorize scriptures. They will understand that Darwin was a clever man, but was only right to a point. They will learn that respect is more important than attitude.

And they will likely teach me those same things.

We pray for the child and her mother. We even pray for the teacher, whether she wants us to or not.

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